


Written in the Stars

by StripedScribe



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Astronomy, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripedScribe/pseuds/StripedScribe
Summary: Soulmates, a name written in the stars. Or a sound, a song, or even a smell. Something to tie you to the one you were meant to be with forever. Your true love, in whatever form that would take.But his were broken. Stars, like his parents, a patch in the sky singing to his eyes. No words, no letters, no name. The clear signs of a lost love, in a week when he'd met thousands of new people. Any of them could be the one, could have been his missed opportunity.It wasn't all love had to be though. He could still fall in love without those marks.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36
Collections: MattFoggy Server Telephone Game Event





	Written in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Gravity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29754252) by [pogopop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pogopop/pseuds/pogopop). 



> Round two for the MattFoggy Telephone game!

He’d never seen a name up there. It was the talk of stories, late night fairy-tales told by his parents, of seeing your soul-mate’s name in the stars. That’s what they both had, appearing in the sky after their first meeting, a tradition born of telescopes.

It revealed itself in different ways to different people. But the stars were the most common, looking up at the night sky after meeting a soul-mate, and being drawn to a spot where the stars spelled out a name, written in your soul-mates handwriting. For this reason, astronomy was popular, a telescope in many people’s homes, pointing out of skylights to the stars. To find the one name, or many, that led to your soul-mates. Paper was tacked to the walls around their telescope, a family home filled with so many years of people discovering their names and not realising which person they’d met that day held it. Different handwriting, and the memories of the past which came with them, grandparents and aunts and uncles, all living in this same house and finding their own soul-mates.

But then others had different signs. Hearing songs or specific sounds after meeting a soul-mate. Or a smell, a hallucination every time they were near. In some ways, these marks were easier, the pollution in the city hiding the stars most nights, the patience needed at having to wait until sunset to check if the one you’d just met was yours forever. Romantic or platonic, everyone had that one person, or those few people, they were meant to be with. Childhood best friends who had always sung the same song together, knowing the words since the day they could talk. An older couple, hands wrinkled with time, who would talk about the stars they knew were still there in the sky for them, even if they couldn’t see them anymore. A group of friends, meeting in college, a scent of candy-floss each time they were around each other. Rarer marks than those again, amongst those the few soul-mates whose marks were physical, matching tattoos appearing, or the pain of sharing injuries. The marks would always match in some way, even if it wasn’t immediately clear. A couple, one would hear songs in their mind, the other had the same lyrics wrapped around their wrist.

Everyone Foggy knew had had stars though. Everyone he was related to had the stars, and so he carried on looking every night, paying attention to the names of everyone he met as he grew older. And still they didn’t appear. He grew older, and convinced himself through high school it was normal to meet your soul-mate later in life. Perhaps he was due to move elsewhere, to meet them abroad, some exotic lands. Not here in the depths of Hell’s Kitchen. It was best for him to just live his life, to carry on, and wait for it to appear, or for something else to show as his mark.

And so he moved. Accepting his place at Columbia, moving away. Meeting so many new people, new friends, room-mates, neighbours. Being so caught up in the joy and stress of this new life that he didn’t look for the stars for a week. He found his way to the college telescope, a late night walk, and staring up at the skies.

Instantly drawn to a cluster of stars, a singing in his heart. But they didn’t make any sense. No name to be seen there, no matter how he squinted or tilted his view. Something was there, only broken. No lines to even suggest letters in another language. Just the glimmer of stars, ordered enough to show a shape, but broken. A draw to his eyes, a screaming beacon to tell him his love was here, he’d met them.

In a week when he’d met probably hundreds, or thousands of new people.

Not even a name to guide him to them. And what did it even mean? Was it broken? Was he broken, unlovable?

Could something have happened to them? The only reason he’d ever known for a soul-mark disappearing was death, there’d been no rumours of that on campus. It had to have been someone he’d seen since moving in, he’d looked for one last time at home before he left.

A tearful phone call later, and his family could give him no more answers. Only a hope that it would make sense in the future, perhaps he’d have a different mark, a song, a sound, when he met them again. Words of warning telling him there was no point in fretting over it, what would be would be.

But his eyes were forever drawn to that spot in the stars whenever he was out at night. Unable to see it through the thick cover of pollution and clouds, but knowing it was there. He didn’t return to the telescope, it wasn’t worth the torture.

He could find love for now in friendship, in new found family. In a too small dorm room with a new best friend, as they pondered the meaning of love.

“It doesn’t have to mean everything, you know?” Too drunk, and sprawled over their beds at gone two in the morning. Matt was rambling, hands thrown up in the air for emphasis. “Soul-marks, they show us one of our loves, but they don’t have to be our only love. If your soul is bonded to someone, it doesn’t stop you- it doesn’t stop you falling in love with other people along the way.” He rolled over, facing towards Foggy, chin propped on his hands. “Fogs? You still alive over there?”

“Yeah, still alive.” Being drunk was too sobering for him. Too much space to think about his star marks. “It’s broken though, I don’t know what’s so important about that. What if they’re dead?”

“If they’re dead- hang on I’m joining you.” He pulled himself up, walking over with stumbling steps to Foggy’s bed and collapsing to his side. A rough pat on his thigh of drunken affection, before he carried on talking. “If they’re dead, then the universe has dealt you an awful hand. And I will fight it for you.”

“You’d fight it for me?” Such simple words, but they brought a tear to his eye. He’d later argue it was solely down to the copious amounts of alcohol they’d consumed. Not that Matt would have seen it anyway.

“Of course. It doesn’t get to hurt you.”

“I’d fight the universe for you as well.” They could wait, together, for whatever signs the universe would give them for a soul-mate. Until then, he could learn to be content with the love he made around him.

The love of his family, through weekly phone calls, posted care packages a reminder of home. Encouraging words, letters he’d keep tacked behind his desk as a reminder of strength and love. Their soppy messages, causing homesickness and happiness all at the same time.

And then of a blossoming relationship, from room-mates to friends, and then more again.

Laying down, his head in Matt’s lap whilst his fingers carded through his hair, teasing out the tangles as he narrated their latest film night. Studying together, legs intertwined on the too small beds, sharing a meal.

More nights spent curled up together on a narrow bed, before they pushed them together, reorganising the room. Desks side by side, spending every moment possible together.

Dealing with the heckling that came from being out and proud about it. Destroying their classmates in mock courts, building their confidence and skills together. An unbeatable couple.

They didn’t need soul-marks to know they were in love.

But something in Foggy’s mind still left him questioning, if there could be more to love than what he felt. If this wasn’t the love of a soul-mate, then how could something be better than this? Were they missing another person in their group, or was he destined to lose him?

Or could it be so simple as a platonic soul-mate out there. Future family or friend, someone new to meet, to fall in love with, deeper and stronger than what he felt for Matt.

“What would a mark feel like for you Matt?” As all their conversations like this seemed to be, it was late at night, staring into the darkness of their dorm ceiling. So close to graduating, and working out where they were supposed to go from there.

“I don’t know. I’ll know when it happens, but until then.” It was a threat, it had always been a threat, that one of them would find their soul-mate. A forever hanging knife over the strings they’d wrapped around each other. They just curled closer into each other, Matt’s hair tickling his neck.

Just enough space between them for him to murmur into the mess of hair in front of him, “I love you Matt.”

“Love you too Fogs.”

And then they were graduating. Heading out into the wide world, hands clasped in each other as they fed themselves to the sharks of Landman and Zack. Forever ignoring that spot in the sky even as they moved from place to place, returning home briefly. He was happy, he didn’t want the sight of some stranger’s name appearing to ruin that.

The billboard across from their apartment was awful, but he loved the patterns it created on Matt’s face. Coloured flashes spilling across the room, too bright to even see the stars behind it. Safer to not even have that option of trying to look.

The roof access was another story. Just high enough out here to try and squint at the stars, to wince as his view was dragged every time to that screaming patch of stars. Better to lay against the cool concrete with his eyes closed, to listen to the same things Matt did, ignore what he could, or couldn’t see.

Until he had to watch out at night-time, as Matt made himself into a vigilante. Their world twisting and turning as the layers of love grew, and the layers of stress from him coming back bruised and injured. Hiding it at work, the stumbled steps on a bruised hip, a sprained ankle. Checking white shirts for blood stains, buying protective gear with their little funds.

He knew he couldn’t stop him. That everything he said he could hear across the city, all the things that he could sense, the things he could just know. Heartbeats, the thump of lies, Foggy’s a sound of love. Something Matt said he wanted to be his soul-mark, for this to be them forever. He had no choice but to help, to patch him up when he stumbled home, to plead with him to go carefully, to come home safe. Knowing he was helping out there.

They left the sharks, and found themselves a smaller fish tank. An office just big enough for the two of them, and then their world turned upside down again. No longer paddling along with the simple cases, they had conspiracy theories, a stranger sleeping on their couch. Fighting for the innocent, ignoring the undoubtedly illegal act of listening to a client’s heartbeat.

Pushing Matt to sleep, to rest on the weekend. Still having things to talk about, tiredness and alcohol relaxing them both, that space outside of work to just talk. A serum of lucidity.

“Tell me, what do you sense? In this room?” He knew Matt could sense further than that, could tell him what the neighbours across the road were doing. But he was curious, to what he could detect in here.

“The feel of silk sheets, catching on hair when you move and breath. Your hair against the pillow, it’s growing long again, please keep it. The clock ticking, and your watch. The movement in my alarm, the clunk of gears. The hum of electric in our phones.” He clicked with his tongue, and Foggy was as ever just content to watch him. “I should have folded up my cane, it’s starting to slide down the wall. You’ve left the closet door open again. I can hear your heart beating, and every breath you take.” He paused, as though to consider his next words, “The gurgling of your stomach.”

“Hmph.” He patted at his stomach, willing it to be quiet. “You missed a sense, what do you smell?”

“You, of course. Coconut mixed with almonds and mint toothpaste. Lavender laundry detergent, our clothes smell the same until they’re worn, and our bed is a perfect mix of you and me.”

It was beautiful. What he saw of the world, and he knew that wasn’t everything. Even more details than that, that would take an eternity to describe, like how he couldn’t ever describe everything he could see. Only focusing on what’s important.

But he could describe how Matt looked forever. Not that he’d ever asked, it was a memory for his own mind, to keep secure and safe and present. To trace a delicate finger along his scars, dancing around his eyes, jumping to run down his arms and chest.

Easier than ever for them to drift off with each other. Matt’s gentle hands playing with his hair until the movement stopped, taken over by gentle sleep. His arm resting on Foggy’s side, and he never felt safer than in this place.

Until they both jumped to alertness as Matt’s cane found itself on the floor. “Told you.” His voice was slurred with sleep, and he sighed as he hugged Foggy closer. Comfortable and warm under the silk sheets, he soon joined him in sleep, to be awoken in the morning by the buzz of an alarm.

A groan as he found his phone, slipping out of the sheets to turn it off, laughing as Matt just curled up tighter in bed. “Come on sleepyhead. We said we’d go shopping.”

“Later.” His voice was muffled beneath the blankets, only his hair showing.

“Breakfast, then mass? Then shopping and we can relax.” He tugged at the sheets, trying to get Matt out of bed. “Mattyyyy.”

“Fine, fine I’m up.” As up as wandering around with a blanket cape could be classed as up, finding his way to the kitchen. Trying to hold onto the blanket as he opened cupboards, a sulking pout forming on his face as he realised how little food they had. “We have nothing.”

“Hence the shopping trip.” He could already predict the next request, and as much as he should fight it and save their funds, he’d want the same.

“Out?” Yep, predictable as hell Murdock.

“We got takeaway last night, we shouldn’t.”

“But-” That face. It was too powerful. “I’ll pay.”

“You’ll pay. From what, the join bank account? From the funds of our co-owned business?” He knew Matt could tell he was joking. And that they’d ultimately end up at their favourite cafe, sat in the window seat. Sharing stories of who he could see walk past, and what Matt could sense around them.

* * *

“Matt, the Luther case? She’s on the phone.” Matt was on his own phone call, the voice of professionalism even as he rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. Spinning on his chair to point at a stack of files, Braille mixed with print. “Her court date’s booked right?” A hushed voice, watching Matt’s reaction. A nod, tracing the letter K onto the table. “She’s not back yet.” A stabbing point to the top file, which if he knew Karen would have been all the most important details Matt needed, only in a format none of the rest of them could read.

He should really learn Braille. It was only one quick question, but he couldn’t even guess at the details. “I’ll let you call her back after that. Good luck.” It was Matt’s case, and he had nothing he could help her with, couldn’t even guess at her answers from his notes. An unrecognisable sea of dots. It couldn’t be that hard to learn, right?

It was.

It so was. And he was supposedly at an advantage with being able to see the things, and not have to detect the differences with a fingertip. He was slowly getting through the alphabet, the patience of Matt’s teaching, and spending evenings trying to learn it, to reinforce it.

Even through Karen and Matt’s offers to just print text under the Braille, he remained stubborn in his need to learn it. You were never too old to learn something new.

He began to bring the prints up to the rooftop, waiting for Matt to return from patrol, removing his advantage of the light to cheat at the dots. Slowly going through the alphabet, numbers, punctuation, reinforcing everything he learned. A welcome distraction to the stars calling out his name above him, an easy opportunity to ignore them.

He gained enough confidence to steal Matt’s files and try and read them, immediately failing. It was a hundred times more difficult than the kids exercises he’d been trying. Contractions and abbreviations, and then Matt’s own shorthand mixed in between.

He wouldn’t give up. He had enough lonely evenings to sink into learning it, even as he realised it would never be quicker for him than just reading the printouts. But it was a skill, and he’d always tried to call himself a jack of all trades.

Braille got easier, he’d never be as fluent as Matt, but it was a welcome skill, and made leaving him notes a lot simpler. Learning to stamp out the letters, adopting Matt’s shorthand to write messages.

A few months later, and they’d closed down the office for a few days, joining the Nelson’s for a camping holiday. The joys of setting up all their tents just as fun as Foggy remembered, a mess of poles and missing lines. Airbeds dragged out onto the grass, laying around and enjoying the silence of the outdoors, away from the bustle of city life. The crackling of a fire in the middle of the semicircle, tents facing into each other, chairs and tables scattered around. Playing card games whilst the sun was still up, Braille stamped onto the corners. Keeping themselves warm with plenty of hot drinks, a walk back into town to pick up pizzas. He was glad they weren’t attempting to cook on a fire this time, awful memories of being 15, too cool to holiday with his parents, trying to eat char-grilled jacket potatoes. Because of course they’d dropped them into a fire and it was too far to get food elsewhere.

Games over, and they’d pulled their mats a distance away to talk together. To check Matt was coping as well as he acted with this adventure, already having admitted it was further than he’d ever been before, and then to sit and enjoy the peace. The stars just about glittering in the sky, and he finally felt like he wanted to look again. To try and see if a name had appeared. And if he knew his parents, there’d be a pair of binoculars in the bag he’d been given to carry. Matt had long since laid back, resting with crossed arms behind his head, the light off the moon reflecting off his glasses. Barely moving as Foggy rummaged through the bag, finding the binoculars and pointing them to the sky.

As always, knowing where to look to find that cluster. Still no name, no letters in the orderly arrangement.

Wait. Too orderly. Could it- could it be?

Three dots in a cell. He marked them out on Matt’s leg. And then one beside it. Four in an almost zig zag, and then again. M. A. T. T. Matt.

A repeated mantra on Matt’s thigh, needing that clarification. “What’s this spell?”

“That’s me. My name, see I told you you’d remember it.”

“That’s in my stars.”

He sat up so abruptly Foggy almost fell over. “What?”

“Braille. In my stars, spelling your name.”

“Wait, what, I don’t understand. You said you couldn’t-”

“It’s always been there. I just, I couldn’t read it and I didn’t think to look for it. It was always just stars, but of course. Marked in their handwriting, it would never be letters.” He looked back up at the sky, seeing the pattern more clearly now. “I always hoped it was you. I couldn’t believe, after that first week in college, that they could be dead, or gone or forgotten.”

Matt was silent, and he could barely see his face in the darkness. Couldn’t tell what he was feeling, how he was reacting.

“We fell in love so easily, a love that must have been close to a soul-mate bond even if wasn’t.” He wanted to scream it from the rooftops, that he’d been so oblivious for years. That he could have known since the day they met that they were meant to be.

“Matt? Come on, talk to me. I can’t tell what you’re thinking, I thought you’d be happy. I found your name, you must have something to tie you to me.” Had he hidden something this whole time?

“I- I don’t.” He switched on a torch, illuminating Matt’s face in the harsh light. He somehow looked terrified and confused at the same time. “I’m happy, I am Foggy, I’m overjoyed it’s you, I just don’t understand what my mark is.”

“You’d know if it was a song, right? I don’t think it can be a song, you’re never humming the same thing. I’d have noticed if it was a tattoo or a physical mark like that. The universe surely wouldn’t be so cruel to give you stars, we met after you lost your sight, it would have given you something you could know. A smell?”

“I don’t know. You just smell like you.”

“Tell me what that is. Everything that is. We’ll cross off what we know.”

“Coconut.”

“Shampoo.”

“Lavender.”

“Clothes detergent.”

“Almonds?”

“Hmm. Were they in the trail mix?”

“I don’t know. You always smell like almonds, isn’t it your shampoo or something?”

“Nope. Remember them. Next scent.”

“Chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate? I might have had a few too many of them tonight.”

“Probably. And pizza but that’s definitely dinner, you don’t always smell like that.”

“I’m honoured you think so. Anything else?”

“Metal, but sweet? If that makes sense?”

“Sweet metal. Okay. Could it be electrics? My phone, my watch or something?”

“I don’t know. It’s just you, I don’t know what else it smells like.”

“I’ve always smelt like it? Even after a shower, after all day in an office? Does it fade?”

He was frozen, confusion clear in his face as he thought. “-No. No it doesn’t change, I guess I got used to it and ignored it?”

“Almonds and sweet metal. Anything else that’s unusual?” He was like a dog, sniffing the air, and on anyone else it would be creepy. “What on earth would they be, what are you smelling?”

“I think everything else is something you use? Wait, walnuts as well as almonds, that’s always there. Walnuts, almonds and sweet metal.”

“We could have known this since college.” It was impossible. It was everything he’d hoped for, and so many years too late.

“I can smell shampoo, what you’ve washed your clothes in for the past month, what soap you use. I just assumed it was your shampoo, or wash, or something, and I learned to tune it out with everything else. And if it was a mark, you had nothing, I thought it was just hopeful thinking, that your soul-mate must have gone. If it was me you’d have had my name.”

“I did. I just couldn’t read it.”

“All these years.”

* * *

Time passed, and although they were happy in their status as soul-mates, they’d never managed to work out exactly what it was Matt was smelling, their marks were broken, linked but yet not quite linked. Another mystery, but one they weren’t too worried about solving. They were content, now engaged and preparing for a wedding, spending every moment in love and together.

Sleepy quiet evenings together, curled up in chairs, listening to books or scrolling on phones. Hot drinks in hand, content with the quiet company of each other.

Silence that was broken with a gasp. He’d almost fallen off his chair, broken away from the endless scrolling of social media with another random article. 

“Foggy? What is it?”

“I was reading this thing, on space and stars. They think they know what stars smell like, that mission that came back a few months ago.”

“Okay?” Of course he didn’t realise why Foggy was so excited, his curiosity only polite, the stars had never interested him as much as they had Foggy. Didn’t have that connection, that joy to endless evenings sat looking out a telescope.

He read from his screen, copying word for word. “Astronauts have likened it to a pleasant smell, almost like sweet welding fumes, sweet metal. As well as walnuts, or baked almonds.”

“Oh.” His mark. Finally the explanation for why theirs were linked together, stars in the sky and an unusual scent.

“I-” It was pure happiness, a final piece to the puzzle.

“You smell of the stars Foggy.” And it was beautiful.


End file.
